


i wish i wasn't such a lonely road

by dollylux



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Implied Relationships, Isolation, M/M, Pining, Spoilers for Episode 19 and on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 04:51:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Indrid's still gone. Duck's still waiting.





	i wish i wasn't such a lonely road

**Author's Note:**

> Dipping my toe in because I'm in love with them and I miss Indrid so very much. (Title from The Shivers song.)

A decision came at the end of every shift for Duck.

At first it had been more difficult because of Greta, but Mr. Tarkesian had promised he’d stop by and feed her if Duck didn’t make it home before nightfall. One night a week had turned into several, and pretty soon, Greta was spending whole stretches of days at Leo’s place, lounging on a soft heated cushion and eating the best canned kitty food to be found in Kepler. 

She hardly missed Duck, and he was too relieved to be offended by it.

It’s a cold, clear night in the middle of February, and the silence of the forest seems absolute.

Indrid’s Winnebago is just where he left it, only it’s dark and quiet and slumped with neglect and heavy snow. The makeshift stairs leading up to the door are just concrete blocks, and the only footsteps to be found there are from Duck’s heavy winter boots.

The generator starts up with a sluggish hum, and the small light in the kitchen area inside the camper makes some of the tightness in Duck’s chest dissipate. There’s a single space heater running beside the couch, one plenty big enough to warm the tight confines of the camper, especially for a man who runs hot most of the time anyway.

He shrugs off his thick parka and places his hat and keys and wallet on the fold out table in what has become the beginning of his nightly ritual.

It had started as a sort of restless project, back after the killer cottonwood incident. Back when Indrid had shot straight up into the night sky, his left eye probably still stinging from Duck’s panicked punch, and left. His first instinct had been to tow the camper to someplace he could keep an eye on it until Indrid’s inevitable return, but something made him hold off. And when days turned into increasingly colder weeks, guilt and constant worry forced him into action.

A thorough cleaning came first.

It felt wrong somehow, throwing out plastic cups stacked on every flat surface, every one of them crusted with dry, molded eggnog remnants and dozens upon dozens of wadded up pencil sketches, but Duck soldiered on, driven by something he busied himself to the point of exhaustion to avoid thinking about.

Five garbage bags. Ten. Fifteen. He’d borrowed Mama’s truck and hauled them to the recycling place, tossing the sorted bags into their respective bins. Then came a cleaning his mama would be proud of, complete with letting foamy chemical sprays set and work their magic before he donned rubber gloves and scrubbed them away, rinsing out sponge after sponge in a bucket of soapy water. Lemon Pledge followed on the few real wood surfaces, followed by Windex and several rolls of paper towels. Vacuuming came dead last, which Duck hated the very most, but by the time he was done, Indrid’s home was spotless and in order, smelling like the snow and pine scented candle flickering merrily on the kitchen counter and looking as devoid of life as Duck had ever seen anything.

He called into work the next day and spent it doing laundry, washing all the blankets and towels and strange, tattered clothes he could find at Indrid’s place, folding them all with so much more care than he’d ever shown his own shit.

He’d made the tiny twin bed in the camper with some of the Gain-scented, warm sheets and blankets, tucked all of the towels on the shelf above the toilet, and placed Indrid’s scant clothes into the single drawer he found empty of notebooks. His red glasses came next, recovered from the snow that fateful night and repaired with a tiny screwdriver to fix the hinges of the frames and cleaned and folded up carefully on the nightstand by the bed.

All in all, it had taken less than a week.

Duck spent the remainder of his winter living in shards of the triple life he’d created for himself: the park ranger, the monster hunter, and the person he became when he stepped into this place. A quiet, hurting man with hands that are reverent and gentle in a way they should’ve been that night weeks--no, fuck, _months_ \--ago when his only idea to save Indrid had involved his fist. A man who kept the TV in the living area on for company as he sifted through abandoned drawings of futures that were now pasts or lost to decisions, trying to understand their artist with no context for any of it.

He’d organized the drawings as best he could, trying to group them together into possible related subjects and by as much of a timeline as he could gather, thinking maybe it’d make it easier for Indrid to find ones he’s looking for later. When he comes home.

He cooks meals on the small electric eye, shaves in the dingy mirror that he swears is smaller than his actual face, and he sleeps on the sinking relic of a couch, too bashful or cowardly or polite to even think about sleeping in Indrid’s bed. He even brings his own blanket and pillow from home.

Duck’s birthday comes and goes with little commotion, and he manages to avoid going out for any celebrations by telling everyone he had plans with someone else, and he finds himself with a half-empty bottle of Fireball Whiskey and a microwave lasagna on Indrid’s couch. Tears blur his eyes the drunker he gets and his dinner goes untouched, and Duck Newton spends his first night as a forty-five year old man watching MASH reruns and wishing he was sharing a couch and a night and a fucking life with a man who is probably immortal and most definitely a cryptid and hopefully somewhere safe and close by with plans to return to Kepler and his camper and his Duck any day now.

Any day now.


End file.
